More than anything,
the current clash between Facebook and the Australian Government represents an
ideal opportunity for agriculturalists and rural communities to stop, think and
rediscover how we all individually interact with social media, both personally and professionally. Firstly, being blocked
from sharing news articles with your friends and contacts via Facebook isn’t
the end of the ...
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Australian of the Year Award
I’d like to pause for a moment to reflect on the recent Australian of
the Year Awards; especially the strong values, deep sense of personal purpose
and achievements shared by each of the winners, which we as Australians can all
be proud of. Firstly, as the Deputy Chair of the National Australia Day Council Board,
and as a Board member since 2010, I’ve been fortunate to observe the ...
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Number one goal to set up the future
NSW Minister of Agriculture, Adam Marshall with the states first Agriculture Commissioner Daryl Quinlivan at a Coffs Harbour banana farm. Photo: NSW DPI. Image credit - The Land I’m looking forward to seeing how newly appointed NSW Agricultural
Commissioner Daryl Quinlivan can deliver positive outcomes through this
first-time role. Daryl took up the challenge in August and recently outlined ...
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Farming – learning from 42 years of journalist’s experience
Veteran Western Australian journalist Ken Wilson’s recent
retirement, after 54 years in the saddle, including 42 as an agricultural
reporter, has prompted me to open-up an important discussion about the
accumulation of knowledge in our industry. Not just how this knowledge is harvested, but also how it’s shared
and how it can be applied. But before going further into these observations, ...
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Entrepreneurialism in the Bush
Recently I read an inspiring article by demographer, author and newspaper
columnist Bernard Salt and felt compelled to share my thoughts and feelings
about it. I’ve read a few of Bernard’s books and always find his writing style to
be open, energising, encouraging and empathetic. When it comes to the nation’s mood, his finger is firmly on the pulse
and his words also demonstrate great ...
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A conversation that needs to be shared
Robbie Sefton believes more people need to come out and declare that a typical Australian farmer is a young, enterprising woman defined by their unyielding passion. Image credit - The Land When we think about what makes Australian farmers tick, typical characteristics
spring to mind such as; hard-working, resilient, stoic, patient and enduring. We think about our farmers as being humble, ...
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Royal Shows play an important role
Royal Shows are integral to the fabric of regional communities and do so much, not only for agriculture, but for the community in general. Image credit - The Land There’s nothing quite like that magical feeling you get after handing over
your ticket and walking through the gates, at the annual Agricultural Royal
Show. After 12-months of anticipation, those first few steps seem surreal ...
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Better connectivity because of community volunteers
From little things big things grow. And there’s no better living example of this saying than the incredible
results achieved by the Better Internet for Rural, Regional and Remote
Australia (BIRRR) group – founded by two young women from the bush who wanted
to fix a problem. A big problem. What started as determined team of volunteers six years ago has now
evolved into a professional service ...
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AgTalk Podcast
The Centre for the Study of Agribusiness (CSA) at Marcus Oldham College is proud to present, Marcus Oldham AgTalk. Hosted by the director of the CSA, David Cornish. Why do farmers need to care about social license? With Robbie Sefton ...
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There’s more to be done
As someone who
grew up on an irrigation farm in southern New South Wales and now runs a
dryland farm in northern New South Wales, I have always been proud to live and
work in rural and regional Australia, and to call the Basin home. I recently had
the honour of Chairing the Independent Panel assessing the social and economic
impacts of water reform on Basin communities. The Panel undertook ...
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Ambition
Australian agriculture has a goal: to generate $100
billion in farm gate output by 2030. Getting there is going to take all the
resourcefulness we've got, especially if the effects are to carry well beyond
2030. Laid out in 2017 by the National Farmers’ Federation
(NFF), with the support of its members, the ambitious 2030 Roadmap requires
that we up the ante of every aspect of agriculture – not ...
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Trust: easy to lose, hard to get back.
We've heard a lot about rural industries’ "social
licence" over the past few years. What is it, actually? In a word, it is trust. It is the community trusting
that farmers, fishers and foresters share broader social values on matters like
environmental stewardship, animal welfare and water resources. When trusted, primary producers and their supply chains
are largely left alone to pursue ...
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Infrastructure
Most of us of a certain age will have known or heard of
someone born when wool and grain was carried from farm to railhead, or to port,
on bullock drays. We’ve probably all seen vintage photos in country pubs
proudly displaying magnificent teams of bullocks heaving burgeoning wool bales
on a well-worn dray through boggy black soils on a nearby dirt road. In the century-plus since, we’ve been ...
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What do we lose as our papers vanish?
America’s founders thought that the freedom of the
press was so important that they enshrined it in the republic’s constitution.
In Australia, we also make much ado about press freedom as an essential
underpinning of democracy – but what happens when there is no press? That’s what we’re seeing in rural and regional
Australia, as the lights of small newspapers blink out one by one. The ...
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The office? Is there a future for behemoths?
If nothing else, COVID-19 has reinforced the immense
value of digital capability. Many businesses – including mine – were able to switch
almost seamlessly from physical offices to online meetings and communication.
My business has been operating as a ‘remote’ business model for 25 years, but
as urban Australian’s catch up, I think that we as a nation have had time to
adjust to working from ...
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Now, time for some grounded debate.
If we take anything from the COVID-19 pandemic, it
might be that nothing worthwhile happens without collaboration and its
inseparable twin, compromise. There has been a growing tendency to sideline these
sensible approaches to problem-solving in Australia's public debates, and to
instead win battles through political strength and favour. Human history
repeatedly shows where this tactic takes ...
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Don’t stop communicating
It’s been 6 weeks since COVID-19 started to change the business landscape. Most organisations successfully communicated the impact of those changes to their customers, and the lucky ones are getting on with the “new” business-as-usual. But the dialogue shouldn’t stop there. As humans we communicate to inform, educate, reassure and maintain relationships. In business we do all of the same ...
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CV19 patterns will change businesses
Image credit - https://www.business2community.com/ In 2004, the phrase "Life comes at you fast"
was a clever tagline for US insurance company Nationwide. In 2020, it has
become a meme for our times. Few of us are comfortable with uncertainty, but our
certainties are built on human expectations that things will track a certain
way. The real world, as the past month has shown, deals in ...
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Change
It is now certain that the global economy will be
completely changed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The nature of those changes are
wholly uncertain, except that there is likely to be extensive short-term damage
to agricultural markets. Fortunately, food and fibre production are the most
essential of essential services, and so agriculture will endure over the long
term. But in what form? Hopefully, ...
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Public relations vs journalism … two professions poles apart, or are they closer than we think?
Importance of a compelling story
makes journalism and PR closer than we think The worlds of journalism and public relations are either
close relations or worlds apart – depends on who you ask. Coming from one
industry to another, I can say both statements are probably true, depending on
whether you focus on the similarities, or the many differences. From journalist
to public relations ...
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Put politics aside for good of regions
Image credit - AAP Image/Lukas Coch via REUTERS Rural and regional Australians are confronting significant social
and economic challenges amid the ravages of a dramatically severe bushfire
season, compounded by one of the worst-ever droughts. Understandably, these disasters have attracted relentless media
attention, with constant up-close commentary of every iteration and angle. This ...
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Great success is at your finger tips
Robbie Sefton says the success of prominent figures from the bush prove you can become anything you want, by working hard and backing your talents. JAN Logan’s success story is an inspiration to all
Australians; not just those from the regions. Just like other accomplished entrepreneurs, an abundance of
self-motivation, passion and creativity underscored Jan’s risk-taking journey, ...
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We need to look at nation as a whole
Business Council of Australia chief executive Jennifer Westacott says we must unleash the potential of our people and places across the whole of the country. Image credit - The Land There is a lot of well-documented frustration in
regional Australia, where some regions feel they have been bypassed in the
nation’s prosperity push. The statistics don’t look all that encouraging, either:
of the ...
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Muster your spirit for rural Australia
ONE thing I’ve learned
over the years, in working with and meeting regional Australians from all
corners of our great country on different projects and initiatives, is this. If you want a miracle,
be the miracle. Unfortunately, these
days – especially in a world dominated by the internet and social media, where
keyboard warriors vent their fickle, fleeting thoughts 1000-Tweets a minute –
it ...
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Resilience tested on multiple levels
THIS has been another challenging
year for the Australian agricultural sector with our resilience tested on multiple
levels. But as always, the
tough times have also seen many good people doing good things to exhibit the fierce
fighting spirit and practical problem-solving prowess that we all know exists
in regional Australia. Undoubtedly, drought is
the biggest issue that’s confronted ...
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The Best Time to Fix the Roof is When the Sun is Shining
To plan or not to
plan, that is the question. In recent weeks I’ve
been travelling through some of the driest regions of New South Wales and
Queensland speaking to farmers about the various ways they’re coping with this
terrible drought. These forums have
included presentations from different people offering sound information and
valuable, practical advice in key services such as farm ...
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Prime Minister announces his drought relief initiative
The Prime Minister has announced his drought relief initiative – see what Robbie Sefton has to say on ABC Radio – The World Today (Monday 4 November) and ABC Radio AM (Thursday 7 November). ABC AM today, Thursday 7th November at 8am Link to story - https://www.abc.net.au/radio/sydney/programs/am/govt-to-offer-super-cheap-loans-to-drought-affected-farmers/11680254 The World Today ...
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Critical for farmers to tell their stories
ABA CEO Anna Bligh (pictured with Bendigo Mayor Margaret O'Rourke with ANZ CEO Shayne Elliott) summarised agriculture's challenge at the NFF conference when she said, "Trust comes in like a turtle and leaves like galloping horses". Credit - The Land STORIES on page three
and five of the Daily Telegraph earlier this month provide another sharp reminder
of not only the agricultural sector’s many ...
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Let’s not sleepwalk into regional decay
Our tiers of government have helped give Australians
some of the world’s best living standards. But sometimes the arbitrary
boundaries we draw to define government areas get in the way of common sense.
Exhibit A: the Murray-Darling Basin. Siloed thinking is also proving unhelpful as we grapple
with where to put all our people. An Infrastructure Australia report recently warned that
if ...
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Alternative Meats
Making people feel good about themselves has always
been a safe bet for activists, politicians and investors. Right now, this
time-proven principle is behind the flow of a whole lot of exploratory capital
into developing meat-protein alternatives. This money is betting that in the future, a lot of
people will believe that avoiding meat that was once part of a living animal is
a virtuous act ...
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